new article: Is Democracy the Answer to Intractable Climate Change?

[Debra Javeline]

Sharing news of our new article (preprint here):

 

Chesler, Angela, Debra Javeline, Kimberly Peh, and Shana Scogin. 2023. “Is Democracy the Answer to Intractable Climate Change?” Global Environmental Politics.

 

Abstract

Climate change is the greatest governance challenge humanity has ever faced. Understanding why some governments successfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions and others fail is thus imperative. While regime type is often hypothesized to be a source of variation in greenhouse gas emissions, empirical findings about the effects of democracy and autocracy on climate action are contradictory. This research note reconciles these inconsistencies and adopts a quasi-experimental approach to investigate the relationship between democratization and greenhouse gas emissions. A fixed effects model with a synthetic control estimator is used to construct appropriate counterfactuals and evaluate the effect of regime type on emissions with data from the World Bank and Varieties of Democracy Project. The analysis shows that movement toward democracy does not have a significant effect on emissions, suggesting that research on the politics of emissions reduction should focus on factors other than regime type.

 

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Debra Javeline

Associate Professor | Department of Political Science | University of Notre Dame | 2060 Jenkins Nanovic Halls | Notre Dame, IN 46556 | tel: 574-631-2793

 

Fellow, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Nanovic Institute for European Studies

Core faculty, Russian and East European Studies Program

Affiliated faculty, Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative